


A Slightly Different Start

by ZiGraves



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Consensual Kink, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 05:17:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZiGraves/pseuds/ZiGraves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing else in Night Vale worked by his usual understanding and prior experiences, Carlos reckoned, so it had perhaps been foolish of him to assume that a relationship or accompanying sex life would follow any of the norms he was used to.</p>
<p>But it had started out so simply, so sensibly. For given values of sensibly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Slightly Different Start

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of people on tumblr lamented the lack of a submissive Cecil, particularly one teaching Carlos how to look after him and be a good Dom. This is for them.

Nothing else in Night Vale worked by his usual understanding and prior experiences, Carlos reckoned, so it had perhaps been foolish of him to assume that a relationship or accompanying sex life would follow any of the norms he was used to.

But it had started out so simply, so sensibly. For given values of sensibly.

Certainly the voice on the radio pining for him had been odd, but it would not be the first time someone had been wooed from afar. And the near-death experience kickstarting the relationship was practically textbook, insomuch as ‘textbook’ could be swapped out for ‘cliche’, but cliches formed for reasons, usually.

Some of the content of the dates themselves had been a little unconventional, with bleeding mushrooms and infectious shadows, but the dates, the general structure of proceedings, had been refreshingly normal. There’d been a date, they’d had dinner and a walk in the park, he’d kissed Cecil good night at the end. There’d been another date, they’d had pizza and seen a movie and it hardly mattered that the monster in the film was considered one of Night Vale’s most famous Hollywood expats.

There’d been a third date.

They’d gone back to Cecil’s place, an apartment with a flight of stairs that didn’t lead anywhere except up and down like stairs traditionally did, with a kitchen and living room and bathroom and bedroom, all blissfully standard fare. Carlos had liked that, sitting in a big soft armchair and studying Cecil’s DVD collection from the other side of the coffee table while Cecil made them both coffee and dropped hints about a bit more than coffee and hummed to himself when he thought Carlos couldn’t hear.

Cecil had pressed a cup into his hand and cradled one of his own, and he’d thought Cecil might perch on the chair’s arm, or in his lap. They were the sort of places that a flirtatious host might make himself comfortable and his intentions obvious, after all.

But, no. Cecil had curled into a spot down at his feet, pressed up against the cushiony fabric of the armchair and the warmth of Carlos’ calves. He’d looked up with wide eyes that didn’t conceal at all the wicked glitter of plans for the evening, and very sweetly asked if he could get Carlos anything else at all, and the timbre of his voice had left Carlos’ throat dry.

“Why?” Carlos had asked, after a few abortive swallows prompted his vocal chords back into functionality but nowhere near the suavity that the occasion demanded. “Is there anything you’d care to suggest?”

And Cecil had smiled, and gently wrested his coffee cup from his hands to set aside on the coffee table, and crawled halfway into his lap to remove trifling obstacles like the zipped fly of his jeans and the concealing fabric of his boxers.

Which, so far, fell within a few standard deviations of normal for third date material, and Carlos had been careful to keep his hands politely on Cecil’s shoulders and not just knot his fingers in the back of Cecil’s hair as he so very badly wanted to. No, it had been Cecil who did that. Cecil who, with his mouth and one hand full of Carlos’ cock, had used his other hand to guide Carlos into making a tight fist in Cecil’s hair, and had made the most impossibly desperate, encouraging noises every time Carlos had pulled a little, or had used the handful to gently tilt Cecil’s head this way or that.

When Carlos had given in under the onslaught of _sucking_ and _tongue_ and that _voice_ , had finally come harder than he had since he was a teenager, Cecil had swallowed every drop and looked up as though he expected a scorecard or further instructions. Carlos had relaxed the grip he had in Cecil’s hair and that, somehow, had tinted Cecil’s wide-eyed expectation with disappointment. So Carlos had gathered him up, kissed him, drunk on the rush of orgasm had told him that it had been amazing, that Cecil had the most fantastic mouth in the hemisphere, that he was so damn _good_  - and that, that had done something. That had turned Cecil’s expression to the sweetest gratitude, that word.

He’d nosed at Cecil’s jaw, struck with affection and the feeling that the evening was going better than a third date in Night Vale had any right to go, and asked what he could do for Cecil in return. The question earned him a perplexing shake of the head, and Cecil had only elaborated awkwardly with further prompting.

“I just wanted to do that,” he’d said, in a voice softer than he used on the radio. “I want to do a lot of things for you, Carlos. And...” The hesitance was something Carlos never heard during broadcasts, but had met with once or twice when they’d spoken and Cecil hadn’t been acting in his capacity as Voice Of Night Vale. There was a shyness Cecil possessed that left him sometimes with words like ‘oh’ and ‘neat’ and sometimes with nothing at all.

“And?”

“And this may be a little unusual, so I would ask you to bear with me.” Carlos had stroked his shoulder, keeping Cecil gathered into his lap, and Cecil had correctly taken it for a gesture of acceptance. “If it’s all right, may I tell you a fantasy of mine?” And Carlos had nodded, of course, as much wary as curious, because Cecil’s tone hadn’t been particularly playful and flirtatious when he’d said that. “Well. You’re so smart, I’m sure you’ve probably worked out that it’s sort of quite a lot about you. I want to… obey you, I suppose. Not just sex stuff, though obviously that - a lot of that - but I just really like the idea of you telling me what to do, letting you just have control.”

Carlos had sat there, still buzzed out on the afterglow of an insanely good blowjob, and not really managed to comprehend what Cecil was trying to offer. Nevermind that whatever it was, Cecil was offering it in that deep, soft voice that treasured every vowel and consonant like works of rare art. And Cecil was offering it to _him_ , and he wasn’t sure if the blow job had been part of it or had been a way to butter him up prior to a potentially tricky discussion.

He’d voiced his confusion about what Cecil actually _wanted_ of him.

“I want to be yours.” Cecil’s resonant voice imbued the word with more meaning than just the assumption of ‘your boyfriend’. On his lips, ‘yours’ became a deeply possessive word, implying ownership and specifically suggesting that Carlos might very shortly find himself in total possession of a very willing Cecil, to do with as he might. Cecil only clarified this. “I mean, I have my preferences, obviously, and there are some things I really won’t do, but we could set boundaries together?”

Cecil had sounded so hopeful in that, and so small for all the depth of his voice. And Carlos had felt like a complete asshole because he hadn’t actually known what to do. It wasn’t like a Night Vale thing where you could just run away and hope the problem could be studied from a safe distance, and it wasn’t something he could refuse out of hand because he really liked Cecil, really wanted to continue dating him and more, and he got the feeling that a ‘no’ at this point would result in one of those fragile little disappointed ‘oh’s.

“Can I take a bit of time to think about it?” he’d asked, because that had been better than admitting total ignorance.

It had been enough. Cecil had smiled, though not widely, and agreed that of course he must think about it. They’d had their coffee, which hadn’t quite cooled all the way to room temperature, and Carlos had gone home to sleep in his own bed that night.

****

\----

****

Over the next few days, Carlos found it was a hell of a lot easier to ask questions via the medium of text message than with the strange and uncertain method of face-to-face conversation.

_So… is it like a sex thing?_ he’d sent, which he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been confident enough to ask with a lapful of Cecil. And he’d got a reply, which had been useful:

_Not exactly. I like sex, but can be a separate thing too._

From there had been the logical follow-up question: _Is it a fetish thing? Collars and chains and stuff?_ which was not only something Carlos knew he couldn’t have asked with a lapful of Cecil, but was also something he was fairly sure he wasn’t going to be comfortable trying. Again the reply came, and it was useful:

_Kind of? Not really into that stuff but I’ll do it if you ask, probably enjoy it if I know you like it_.

Carlos sent several more messages, in varying degrees of clarity, and received replies in the same degree of clarity every time. He still didn’t think he understood it, but Cecil had at least said that he knew it was kind of weird and he understood if Carlos just wanted to date and not do the Cecil-specific stuff.

It felt recursive. He wanted to do the thing that Cecil wanted, which was Cecil wanting to do whatever Carlos wanted. It looped. At one point he gave up and tried google, but that turned out to be a lesson in search history removal and Carlos was pretty sure that stuff wasn’t what Cecil was after. Pretty sure.

They had another normal date, with a picnic and a trip to one of the local history museums, and Cecil gave no sign at all that he was waiting on any sort of answer from Carlos, not even as they fled the horde of distressingly hungry animatronic settlers. Carlos got a kiss goodnight at the end, and noted how when he took Cecil’s hand to pull him in for another kiss, Cecil followed as though it were the most natural flow of movement in the world.

The kiss was long and deep, and drunk on the near-death escape they’d managed from the museum Carlos let his teeth scrape Cecil’s lip. The moan he got in response was entirely unsuitable for a front door-step.

“Come in?” he asked, and Cecil looked at him like the invitation was a benediction.

“It’s kind of bachelor,” Carlos said, attempting to toe a burnt and discarded labcoat underneath the narrow hallway’s table and surreptitiously rearranging the tabletop to make it look less like an accumulation of half-interesting rock samples that had never been processed and more like somewhere to put sensible things like keys and phones.

“It’s _yours_ , Carlos, I love it.” Cecil’s hand floated over the detritus of the table almost reverently. “And you bring your work home, too. So dedicated.”

“Yes, well…” Carlos hadn’t actually thought past the invitation for Cecil to come in, and found himself at a loss. It had been a while since he’d been in a position to invite anyone home. “Do you… want a coffee, or anything? Or…” Cecil’s attention was entirely on him, bright and blinding as a searchlight. He continued with caution. “Or we could talk, maybe, about what we’d like from each other. If you want.”

“I would like that,” Cecil agreed, clinging to Carlos’ arm as he led the way to a small and cluttered living room. The sofa had signs of being recently slept on, a pillow draped over one arm and a blanket half on the floor, but had room enough for both of them to sit. And Cecil sat where he was bade, not on the floor but at Carlos’ side, ducking his head and shoulders down to make the Carlos seem the taller of them.

Carlos kissed him, kissed him again when Cecil made a tiny, encouraging noise, remembered the way Cecil had sounded with Carlos’ hand in his hair and brought it up to tangle in that same spot again, not pulling, but… holding. Holding.

Holding and noticing the way Cecil relaxed into his touch unquestioningly, eyes closed and mouth soft with small, whimpering breaths.

“Is this what you want?” he asked, cautious of uncertain new terrain. Cecil’s throat bobbed.

“Please.”

“And I could… tell you what I’d like, and you’d do that?”

“ _Please_.” Carlos had never heard Cecil so ragged, so close to begging. It was a surge of pure power, heady and more than a little scary to be handed all at once. He let go of Cecil’s hair and Cecil stayed exactly where he was, head tipped back and eyes closed and vulnerable was the word that came to mind.

“Cecil. Look at me.”

Cecil righted himself, back into the posture of rolled-in shoulders and smallness, looking up with nothing but trust and patient expectation. Carlos swallowed.

“You’ve got to tell me if there’s anything you don’t want to do, or, or can’t do.”

Cecil nodded, not breaking eye-contact for even a second. Carlos was momentarily swept up in the realisation that he really could tell Cecil to do almost anything at all, and Cecil would. Cecil trusted him not to ask anything stupid or dangerous. Cecil would give him another of those amazing blowjobs if he asked, or would go make coffee and spend the rest of the night sitting on the floor, or strip right there on the spot, or anything at all that Carlos asked of him.

For that exact reason, Carlos knew he really didn’t dare ask much at all. He knew Cecil liked sitting at his feet, that had come up last time, and Cecil seemed to like having his scalp played with a bit.

“Here,” Carlos gestured to the floor. Cecil seemed to ooze from the sofa, folding down in a single economic movement to kneel just beside his feet, looking up and awaiting another instruction.

“Good,” Carlos said. “Very good.” And that seemed to work, spreading a wobbling, adoring smile across Cecil’s upturned face. He reached out slowly, hesitant until he saw his uncertainty mirror itself on Cecil’s features, and ran his hand through Cecil’s hair. Front to back, stubby nails dragging a little across the scalp, scratching at the nape of the neck, and again. Cecil’s eyes drifted closed and he leaned into the touch.

It bought Carlos a bit more time to work out what he actually wanted to do and to have a short internal debate regarding meaningful consent and whether Cecil’s very open offer to do anything at all actually counted as that. He worked out a compromise with himself where he could ask Cecil to do something, and give him a very clear chance to say no or voice a concern, and he’d just have to hope that Cecil would actually uphold his agreement to speak up if he was asked to do something he couldn’t.

“Okay,” he said, more to himself than anything. “Okay.” Cecil’s eyes snapped open, waiting. “Cecil, remember our last date? Would you like to do that again?” Cecil nodded, eager, pressing up against Carlos’ hand where it still rested on his head, but he did not move forward yet. “You have to tell me, then. Tell me what you want to do for me.”

“I would like to suck you off, please?” He didn’t sound sure, as though he didn’t know the lines, or hadn’t expected a speaking role. Carlos smiled, petting the back of his neck, and that seemed to help.

“Ask again, nicely,” he prompted, and this seemed to be more in Cecil’s understanding of how things worked.

“Please. Please may I suck your cock? Please can I? I want to help you feel good, I want to be good for you. Please let me?”

Carlos looked down at Cecil, who knelt between his legs and begged beautifully for a chance to give him what would probably be the best blowjob of his life, and thought two things.

One, he thought how easy it would be to say no. Just one syllable. And he didn’t even know what it would do, whether Cecil would accept it as Carlos’ role to do as he pleased or whether it would hurt him, break him, to be made to beg for something he couldn’t have.

Two, he thought he was probably harder than he’d been in years and that anyone who could listen to Cecil literally begging on his knees and still refuse was probably both heartless and inhuman.

He scratched the hollow at the back of Cecil’s neck and wet his lips.

“That’s-” he started again, swallowing to ease the lump he found in his throat. “That’s _very_ good, Cecil. Well done. You can go ahead.”

Cecil made the smallest, happiest noise Carlos had ever heard, and then Carlos had a lapful of Cecil, and his hands fisted in Cecil’s hair.

It was different to the first time, Cecil more intent on using his mouth and keeping his hands set entirely out of the way on his knees. He groaned every time Carlos pushed or pulled with that grip on his scalp, the noise thrumming richly down Carlos’ cock, moaned hungrily for more but never, never moved to take it unless Carlos’ hand pushed him to it.

Carlos had just about enough presence of mind to warn before he came, loosing his hold just a little to let Cecil adjust as his hips twitched in tiny, helpless bucks into the warmth of Cecil’s incredible throat. Cecil swallowed, kept swallowing, until Carlos was too sensitive and had to pull him off. He looked up, lips wet and puffy, eyes wide and begging for praise.

Carlos dragged him up into his lap, whispering promises and reassurances that Cecil was good, so good, the best, so clever and well behaved, repeating himself often when his foggy brain couldn’t summon up much variety. Cecil curled into the warmth of his chest and Carlos held him tight about the shoulders. Carlos kissed him on the cheeks, temples, forehead, and worked his free hand a bit awkwardly to open Cecil’s belt and fly, finding him so hard that his cock was dribbling a little already.

It was impossible to tell whether it was the touch of his hand or the whispered praise that set Cecil off, but he was coming messily in Carlos’ hand with a strangled sob and shaking in his arms.

In the stillness afterwards, it was long minutes before Cecil came back to himself. Carlos, uncertain and not really having got this far with questions or google searches, just kept on murmuring praise and stroking his back until given any sign to the contrary.

“Thank you,” Cecil said, tiny and fragile. He seemed to be having trouble rallying his words, so Carlos kissed him. He looked surprised, as though he’d neither expected nor deserved that small kindness.

“Are - are you okay?”

“I’m just. A bit.” Cecil took a deep, gulping breath, making a visible effort to rally his words and form them into a coherent sentence. “Sorry, I. It’s been a long time since anyone did that for me, and I’m a little overwhelmed.”

“Okay.” Carlos kissed him again, since it seemed to be a good thing to do and he didn’t have any other point of reference. “I’m going to go get some tissues or something.”

Cecil didn’t protest being gently deposited on the couch, and hadn’t moved at all when Carlos came back with a less sticky hand, a box of tissues, and a glass of water. He was apparently together enough to clean himself up, wiping the stray gelid drips off his stomach and shirt with an expression of distaste.

“So,” Carlos said, as they passed the glass between them and alternated sips. “It’s probably really bad form to ask this or something, but… is that the sort of thing you wanted?” He felt Cecil curl up against his side and nod.

They finished the water in a shared silence that Carlos felt no impulse to try breaking, Cecil slurping ungracefully rather than sit up straight enough to drink easily.

“You can ask for other things, too,” Cecil said after a while, still cradling the empty glass. “I’d be happy to do some cleaning up if you told me, or cook you dinner, or comb your hair. Whatever you tell me to do. And maybe you could tell me to do other things, too, put me to bed if I’m too far gone. Take care of me. I know I’m asking a lot, I’m sorry. You really don’t have to.”

“It’s okay.” The quiet drew on, and the sofa creaked slightly as Cecil settled further down into Carlos’ ribs. There were a lot more questions percolating away, being stored for text messages in the near future and a possible refinement of search engine terms.

He caught himself about to doze off, and suspected something similar was happening to Cecil.

“C’mon, it’s getting late. Up.” Cecil shifted, but didn’t actually detach from his comfortable spot wedged between Carlos and the sofa cushions. “You don’t want to sleep on this thing. Up, and let’s get to bed.” That got Cecil moving, halfway asleep, still clinging to Carlos’ arm as he followed him to the bedroom and an actual bed, which looked a lot less slept-in than the sofa.

Carlos offered Cecil a spare shirt to sleep in, slipped in beside him, kissed him and apologised for his lack of a spare toothbrush. Cecil smiled vaguely, only barely hanging on to wakefulness because the light was still on, and wrapped himself around Carlos.

It was the sort of sight he could get used to seeing, Carlos thought, hitting the bedside lightswitch. Cecil in his bed, exhausted and blissed out. Perhaps not from anything particularly strenuous, which might be a more traditional way to pass out tangled up in bed, but well.

Nothing else in Night Vale had gone quite the way he’d expected. Carlos found he quite liked the unusual path it had taken with Cecil.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a tumblr. It's zigraves.tumblr.com


End file.
